Review: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Title: Before I Fall

Author: Lauren Oliver

Publication date: October 25th 2010

Publisher: Harper

Buy: Amazon 

What if you only had one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life? Samantha Kingston has it all: looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. Living the last day of her life seven times during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death—and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.

What if you died and had to relive the same day over and over?

Erm I would go crazy.

As much as I love this limbo thing that Sam seems to be stuck in; at the same time it’s very annoying. She is stuck in some weird dimension after being in a car accident (don’t let your friends drink and drive while you’re in a car with them) waking up every day on the 12^th of February and reliving her day until she dies again. How very morbid. It made me think about the day I die. I want to think that there is literally nothing just peaceful darkness and nothing out there, but this made me wonder what would happen if once I die I get stuck in a limbo dimension and keep reliving that day. Yeah I don’t want that at all. If this happens, I am never dying.

Popular girl Samantha has everything she might ever want. A perfect boyfriend, perfect friends, perfect popular life. Until she dies and has to relive that day over and over again to realise just how much her life has not only affected other people but also to realise that she’s a bitch.  What perfect day to relive than the Cupid Day her high school hosts to show exactly how popular you are with the number of roses you receive.

I like the book for bringing out emotions and having the main character Sam find herself and realise that she’s a little if not a lot of a bitch to people. She finally realises how her popular lifeis not as perfect. But at the same time I really dislike the mean girl attitude that all the characters have. I really disliked Sam at first although she did grow on me, but her friends. No. They are spoiled little girls who think that they can rule the whole school because they have perfect hair, perfect lives and perfect boyfriends; and yes I know some of them do hide secrets and their lives aren’t perfect on the inside but I am talking about the outside right now.

The book did not make me cry or feel sorry for the characters or actually be obsessed and crazy about it. Lauren Oliver’s style of writing is amazing and I loved the way she told her story, I just wasn’t keen on the story she was telling. Some of the bits were repetitive and got a bit boring to the start of the book. The main key bit that I loved in the book was the way Sam found herself even though it was too late. She was already dead and she was just figuring out how much of a bad person she really was. To the end of the story I was beginning to like Sam. Kent was my favourite character though. He reminded me so much of Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds that I couldn’t not love him.

Okay so the ending. I get the bit where Sam needed to learn to be less selfish and sacrifice herself for other people in order to be a better (dead) person. But how did she die when she was already dead? I can’t wrap my head around this! She was already dead, and to save herself she needed to die again saving someone? How does that automatically save her soul. It makes literally no sense that just one tiny good deed in a fake dimension will save her from all the bad stuff that she committed over the years.

This quote is so beautiful. “So many things become beautiful when you really look.” It really did make me think more about the way I was looking at certain things and people and it did make me realise that things can be beautiful at times.